Necroverse Drabble Collection
by V-chan2k6
Summary: A series of unconnected drabbles set in the universe of 'Necromancer.'
1. Crowning Glory

A/N: Not actually an April Fool's joke! But today seemed like a good day to come out of hiding with a goofy little flufflet. You don't need to have read _Necromancer_ to understand it, if you're willing to suspend your disbelief about Tenten and Sasuke hanging out. :)

These days I'm posting mainly on Archive of Our Own under two names: V-chan2k6, and likethedirection. It's where I have my fic in the Glee and Supernatural fandoms as well. You're welcome to go check it out!

I actually have quite a few partially-written oneshots that take place in the Necroverse, but just never ended up posting them due to being eaten by other fandoms, other projects, and/or real life. But this one I did finish, and as it seems Necromancer is still being discovered and read (seriously, guys, I have no words for the response it has gotten over time, miles and miles beyond what I'd expected when I posted that first chapter in 2006), I'm inspired to try and finish some of these oneshots that have been hanging in limbo and post them in a collection here. It will NOT be chronological, and some entries might be in parallel universes from each other - I'm just messing around in the Necroverse because it's fun. :) Enjoy, and happy April Fic Day!

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**Crowning Glory**

.

It wasn't that Sasuke ever forgot that Tenten was a girl. That would be ridiculous. She was different from the girls who had followed him around at the Academy - different from a lot of the people around him, really, in a way that he couldn't put his finger on - but she was still, ultimately, a girl. That said, by the time he was newly fourteen and she was halfway to fifteen, he'd lulled himself into assuming that she would never actually _remind_ him of that.

She hadn't seemed distracted until after they had finished training and taken their usual spots in the clearing, cleaning their collected blades and putting them away. She was quicker at it than he was, her movements as efficient and mechanical as they had to be to maintain the arsenal she did, and so she finished before he did, clasping her hands under her knees and frowning at the ground.

He didn't ask - he got preoccupied inside his own head often enough to not be bothered by anyone else doing it - but he didn't expect her to lift her head and pose the question.

"Should I get a haircut?"

Sasuke glanced at her sidelong, wary. "How should I know?"

She sighed. "Help me out, Sasuke. I need advice on this, and all my friends are guys."

"I'm a guy."

She rolled her eyes. "I know you're a guy. But I'm not talking about this with either of my teammates."

Sasuke grunted, thrown off. "Hyuuga would know more about hair problems."

"Ha, ha. Give me five minutes and an honest opinion and it'll be all over with, promise." He opened his mouth, but she went on, "It's just, I've been wearing it like this ever since I grew it out, because when I was a kid it was really short and the other kids made fun of me for looking like a boy. So once it was long enough, I started doing it like this. You know, girl-hair." She squeezed her hair-buns with an unsatisfied twist of her mouth, then got to work undoing first one, then the other. "Of course, then I got made fun of for looking like a mouse or a dumpling-head, but at least they knew I was a girl. But I haven't changed it in ages, you know?"

"My hair has been the same since I was five."

She clicked her tongue and pitched an acorn at him, which he batted out of the air, unconcerned. She huffed and finished undoing her hair, taking off her forehead protector and finger-combing through the loosened waves while she talked. It was longer than it looked, falling past her shoulders to the middle of her back. (_Climbing up to the bed to watch Mother at the mirror, mystified at how pulling out that one little stick can send her hair tumbling down, down, down, long and dark and beautiful.)_

"-so then I thought to myself, why not just shave it all off and tattoo the Leaf symbol in the middle of my forehead to save time?"

Sasuke blinked rapidly. "_What?_"

This time, the acorn bounced right off his head while she chuckled at him. "I was wondering when you'd snap out of it. Where did you go?"

Sasuke pulled himself back to the moment and shook his head. "Nowhere."

She let out her breath. "Look, I know it's boring, okay? I'm boring myself by talking about it. Can you try to last just two more minutes? I don't have anyone to talk about this with and I need to get it out in the air so I'll have room to think."

Resigned, Sasuke turned to face her directly, resting his elbows on his knees. "Don't shave your head."

The expression she shot him was wholly unimpressed, and he lifted an eyebrow. "You wanted advice."

She groaned, flopping back against the stump and sullenly twisting her hair over one shoulder. "It doesn't matter that much what it looks like, as long as it's out of the way." Untwisting it, she let it fall back down and took some of it between her fingers like scissors, looking at them with a calculating eye. She moved her finger-scissors down, then up higher, to her chin. "I guess we're not in the academy anymore. Maybe I should just chop it off again-"

"No," Sasuke was blurting before his brain could catch up.

She blinked at him. "No?"

Mentally kicking himself, Sasuke backpedaled, "...You can do what you want." He shrugged. "But it's...good." Another mental kick, and he was pretty sure he was making his own hair stand on end. He looked moodily away. "It's good long."

Tenten was staring at him - he could feel it - and he wished she'd stop so his face could cool down.

"Huh," she said, finally. "The rumors really were true."

Sasuke frowned and glanced back. "Rumors?"

She had a teasing smile for him when he looked, even if she was looking a little pink herself. "Back in the academy. There was a whole year when almost all the girls in the next year down - well, your year - they all started growing their hair really long. When I asked one of them why, she said it was because 'Sasuke-kun _likes_ long hair.'"

She pitched her voice high and girly and horrifying, dramatically tossing her hair over one shoulder, and whatever face he made was enough to make her burst out laughing. "Sorry," she said, smiling big and bright and sounding like herself again. "Bad experiences, right?"

"...Don't ever do that again."

He was very serious about this request. It just made her laugh more.

"I'm just teasing you," she said once she'd caught her breath. She pulled her hair to the nape of her neck and started doing something there. "That really was the rumor, though."

Sasuke sighed, dropping his face into his hand. "That wasn't…" He shook his head

Tenten's hands paused. "What?"

He dropped his hand to his side again, frowning at the ground. Too quietly, he said, "That wasn't it."

She watched him a bit longer before resuming her...braiding, that's what she was doing. "What was it?"

(_After, Mother doesn't go to the mirror anymore. She doesn't let down her hair. He doesn't watch it tumble down or wave behind her when she walks or twist between her fingers while she talks. She can't, and he can't, because Mother is gone._)

Sasuke shook his head again. "It doesn't matter."

She didn't look like she believed him, but didn't ask anything more. She tied off her braid and fastened her forehead protector back under her bangs, then got to her feet, pulling out a kunai.

"The thing about long hair," she said as she went through a quick kata, the braid whipping behind her, "is that it isn't all that practical." She stopped, reset, and started another one, seeming to be testing something. She followed the kata in a quick turn to the opposite side, and the braid bounced off her neck before settling over her shoulder. She frowned with a disapproving hum. "If you're not smart about it, long hair can kill you."

Sasuke couldn't suppress a snort, and she clicked her tongue again, pitching the kunai into the target over his head. "I'm serious! We learned about it in the academy! While all you boys got to go out and practice sparring and taijutsu and all the _fun_ stuff, _we_ got a _whole day_ devoted to _how not to get strangled with your hair_."

Sasuke bent his head and fought the laugh very, very hard. He succeeded, sort of.

Tenten heaved a put-upon sigh. "Laugh it up, smart guy. Just for that, you're helping me test this. Up!"

"Test what?" he asked, not bothering to help much as she tugged him to his feet.

"This," she said, picking up the end of her braid and waving it at him. "I think it could work, but it could also be a liability in battle. So you're helping me test it." She pulled her kunai out of the target and took position. "Your mission is to try and use this thing against me to win a match," she said, holding up the braid again before dropping it down her back, "and _my_ mission is not to let you."

He stared flatly at her. "You want me to try and strangle you with your hair."

"Yep!" she said brightly. "Or trap, or distract. No chopping it off, though, or you're the one getting throttled with it." She threw him a winning smile. "Got it?"

Sasuke hesitated to get in position. Yes, being a shinobi meant noticing and taking advantage of every option, but beating someone by grabbing their _hair_ just felt...cheap. "I'm not going to chop it off."

Studying him, she added, "Will you help me if I throw in a free ice cream?"

"I don't need-" He let out his breath and gave up, dropping into his stance. "Just go."

"You're the best!" she said, then sprang forward and cheerfully kicked him in the face.

One of the first things Sasuke had learned about Tenten was that fighting her was different than fighting other people. That in itself wasn't really a surprise; from shinobi to shinobi, every fight felt different. Fighting Naruto was a competition. Fighting Kakashi-sensei was a lesson. Fighting Anko-sensei was an endurance test. All different, but all serious, all focused.

Fighting Tenten was different. Fighting Tenten was _fun_.

It was fun, he was realizing, because _she_ was having fun. She wasn't fueled by darkness, by trauma or isolation or vengeance - she just fought because she loved it. She was the only girl he'd ever met who would take a roundhouse kick to the jaw and _smile_, not nastily or ruefully, but just...happily, because she liked that kind of challenge. She tried new things, sometimes weird things, sometimes complete failures of things, and she had fun doing it, and sometimes he couldn't keep his lips from twitching up in return, because it was contagious.

Other times, he would not have that problem, because he was ten minutes into a spar and getting smacked in the face with a braid.

He sputtered, his eyes automatically squeezing shut for a second too long, and the next thing he knew there was a delighted, "Ha!" and his shoulders were hitting the ground under Tenten's weight, knocking the wind out of him. A practice kunai pressed to his throat.

He groaned and cracked an eye open, waiting for her to declare the match, but she didn't. She was laughing too hard.

"I can't believe that worked!" she managed between giggles. In reply, Sasuke darted a hand around and gave her braid a hard yank.

Tenten yelped and snapped back to attention, but Sasuke had already knocked the kunai out of her hand and thrown his weight into her, overshooting a little from the awkward angle and rolling them a half-turn too many. It didn't matter, though; he ended up underneath her again, but by the time they got there, she had a braid tugged around her throat and a kunai pressed under her left shoulder. Much better.

"Match."

Tenten gulped in a half-breath, her head awkwardly angled from the pull on her hair, and spoke through her teeth. "Not one word."

Sasuke smirked. Tenten glared. Then her mouth twitched, and her eyes twinkled, and she finally collapsed back into giggles. "You're such a brat," she said, laugh-staggered and unconvincing.

"You didn't call the match," he pointed out. "Now you're dead."

Tenten dropped her forehead to Sasuke's chest, shoulders still shaking helplessly, and she was starting to be contagious again. Sasuke pressed his lips together. Muffled, Tenten laugh-whimpered, "Hair-asphyxiation. That's the worst cause of death _ever_."

She broke into hard, near-silent laughter again, and Sasuke finally gave in, exhaling a laugh of his own. He dropped his head back to the ground to wait her out, relaxing his kunai-arm and loosening his grip on her hair, watching the sky.

A second, and he closed his eyes. _This,_ he told himself._ If things get bad again, remember this._

Finally Tenten seemed able to pull herself together, turning her head to the side and using him as a pillow for just a second as she caught her breath, and patted his shoulder. "Lemme go."

Sasuke complied, letting go of her braid and lifting his arm from her back so she could roll off and flop down next to him, still beaming with mirth. She shook her head. "That was ridiculous."

"Yeah."

"And _this_," she held up the end of the braid while he sat up, "is definitely not going to work." She followed suit with a huff, frowning at it before glancing at him. "You have any bright ideas?"

Sasuke lifted an eyebrow at her. She rolled her eyes. "Fine, fine," she said, idly twisting the braid around her hand. "We can be done. Good fight, anyway. Cheater."

"It wasn't cheating."

"You played dead!"

"You hit me with your _hair_."

A giggle surprised its way out of her, but she seemed to catch herself before she could lose it again. "Never saw it coming, did you?"

He grunted, and she threw him a saccharine grin before lowering her eyes to her braid, wrapped twice around her hand now. She paused, eyeing it, and thoughtfully bit her lip. "Hold on."

Unraveling it from her fingers, she reached behind her head to fuss with the braid again, this time coiling it into a tight, thick bun at the base of her head, tucking the bottom tuft into her hair tie.

Not that Sasuke was staring - he wasn't - but it was sort of fascinating, watching her work, watching how the new shape made her looks change without quite changing. Her old hair-buns had made her seem younger somehow, less threatening, at least until he'd gotten to know her. This was different.

She grabbed her kunai and rolled to her feet, setting herself up for the same kata as before. Running through it, she grinned. "_Now_ we're talking." She turned the smile on him. "What do you think? Wait, no, first question: Are any embarrassing nicknames popping into your head right now?"

Sasuke shook his head, studying her. "You look older."

Her eyes lit up. "Really?" He shrugged, and she made a delighted noise and moved into another experimental kata. This time, the braid-bun came loose and tumbled down her back again when she turned too quickly, and she made a face. "Ah, it's all messed up from sparring. I can figure it out for tomorrow." She held out a hand to pull him to his feet, and he took it while she chuckled. "I wonder if anyone will know it's me. People barely remember who I am _now_, and I've been Bun-Head Girl for four years." She threw him a mischievous grin. "I bet I can confuse nine out of ten people in the next week. What's your wager?"

Sasuke frowned at her, dusting off his clothes. "People know you."

"Come on, Sasuke. The first time we talked here, it took you a whole conversation to remember my name." He opened his mouth, but she raised her eyebrows expectantly at him, and he reconsidered. She pulled her braid over her shoulder, absently fussing with it again. "It's really okay. Lucky, even. We're shinobi, and we're moving up. Chances are we'll be put on a lot of stealth missions in the future. When you're trying not to get noticed, ordinary is the best thing you can possibly be."

"You're not ordinary."

Her face opened up, just for a second, in something like surprise. He held her gaze, and it was easy to do, because sometimes, truth was easy.

For a long beat, she didn't reply, and then a tiny smile played at her lips and she dropped her gaze. "Don't say that, Sasuke," she said, a little too soft for the joke it was meant to be. She lifted her gaze, and she was grinning and confident again. "For all you know, being stealthy is my long-lost bloodline limit. I _could_ come from a long line of masters of disguise."

She punctuated it by pulling her braid under her nose in a makeshift moustache, and Sasuke couldn't fight a snort, rolling his eyes. Tenten chuckled and threw the braid back over her shoulder, slipping her kunai into its holster. "Come on. You were a brave martyr and put up with my girl-talk, so I owe you an ice cream."

"I said you don't need to-"

"Okay, I'll rephrase," she interrupted, sighing. "_I_ want ice cream, and it's depressing to go for ice cream alone, and also I figured you were going to say no so I stole your money pouch while we were sparring."

Sasuke's mouth dropped open as she produced the pouch with a cheeky, triumphant, not-at-all-guilty grin. "Well, that's settled!" She moved cheerfully past him, pouch in tow, and Sasuke sighed and followed. "I think I'm getting strawberry. Or maybe mint chip. Both? Would that be weird? What kind do you even li-_ee!_"

She cut herself off with a squeak when he tugged on her conveniently-tuggable braid in passing, throwing her off-balance enough for him to snatch his money pouch back, not missing a step. Coolly and maybe a little smugly, he replied, "Red bean."

Tenten gawked at him and shrilled, "You jerk!" In the next second he was yanked into a headlock, her hand ruffling his hair so thoroughly that he tried (failed) to recoil with a squawk that he would deny until the end of time. She relented when he elbowed her, not hard, but not before swiping the pouch away again with a triumphant, "Ha!"

Sasuke grabbed for it, but she danced out of range. "Nope! Mine now!" She threw him a broad grin and started in the direction of the village at a sprint, calling over her shoulder, "Catch me if you dare, Uchiha!"

Contagious. Even as he dashed after her through the trees, across the training grounds and into the streets, it vaguely occurred to him that he was smiling.

_I will remember this.  
_

_._

(He would also remember, after the multitude of bewildered stares and the way Tenten burst out laughing into her hand when he caught up, just what happens when you over-ruffle a lightning-user's hair.)


	2. Nice Girls

A/N: This installment was sitting half-finished in my documents for ages and ages. It is, more than anything else, my attempt to find some compassion for Sakura, who didn't get much exploration (or much of a break) in Necromancer. It's been fascinating to try and get in the head of this girl, who has an entire persona inside her that she keeps held back.

Takes place not too long after the end of Necromancer, and makes a whole lot more sense if you have read Necromancer first. Enjoy!

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Nice Girls

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Sakura hated her sometimes. She wished she didn't, but she did.

It wasn't something she could explain to anyone without feeling petty, because really, there was very little to hate about Tenten. She was modest and well-meaning, honest and kind; she was strong enough to earn respect, but not enough to intimidate, and always willing to befriend and help shinobi less talented than herself; she wasn't beautiful enough to resent, or ugly enough to revile, but plain and natural, nothing more or less than herself. And she was devoted, always seeming to go above and beyond for her friends if she could.

In short, she was an average, hardworking, genuinely nice girl. Sakura had hoped never to become the kind of person who would hate a nice girl.

And really, it wasn't Tenten's fault for being in the right place at the right time, or for knowing an advanced weapon technique straight from a book. It wasn't her fault that she was born with dark hair and dark eyes, like nearly every Uchiha in recorded history—it was common coloring, really, especially among civilians, even if she did fade out a little among her fellow kunoichi. And it certainly wasn't her fault that Sasuke had nearly killed her, or that it had been the last push he'd needed to let go of Orochimaru and finally come home.

Tenten couldn't be blamed for any of that. For anything at all. It didn't make her some kind of viper, because she wasn't. She was a nice girl.

The nice girl who had replaced her.

Most of the time, she tried to ignore it, simply for lack of better (reasonable) options. There was nothing to be done, because if she didn't ignore it, she couldn't help but analyze. And analyze.

Because she had thought Sasuke had considered her his friend, if nothing else. She and Naruto, his team, they were friends. She had never seen him spend time with other people by choice before, so she'd assumed that the way Sasuke was with her and Naruto, tolerating and scoffing but never leaving (except the once), was just what his friendship looked like.

Then he had walked past Tenten on the training grounds, and she had teased him and he had sulked, but not scoffed, and _listened_. Listened, like what she had to say was something that mattered, not something for him to escape. Then she had been the only one to know where to find him when he'd escaped from the hospital. Then had come the Chuunin Exam.

That had sealed it, the Chuunin Exam. Sakura had been busy with her apprenticeship and training of her own, but she had glimpsed them, now and then, training together. Talking. Smiling, sometimes. Sakura had embraced Sasuke after his win because she couldn't not, and he'd patiently waited for her to let go. Two minutes later, Tenten had embraced him, and he'd sunk into it like he'd been waiting for it for a long, long time.

Analyzing it never did any good, because it would always just bring Sakura back to the same question: _What did I do wrong?_

The other effect was the anger. If she thought about it for too long, a little of her sanity would fly away and she would have to bite back a scream. When she was angry, she wanted to make Tenten ugly, the way she felt herself. But she'd worked in the hospital long enough now to know that people could be their ugliest when they were in pain. She didn't know what that said about her, that the bitterest side of her would wish that on someone. (Because that wasn't her, and it had never been her. Sakura could be silly, and awkward, and weak, but she was a nice girl, too. Outside, and, she'd thought, inside.)

She did not want to hate Tenten. But sometimes, she did.

Continuing to ignore it would have been the wise choice. Not even going to the targets on the training grounds would have been even wiser. But she wasn't there because of Tenten or Sasuke; she was there because keeping her skills balanced was important, and she had never been great with distance fighting. Maybe the amount of respect – _respect_ – in Sasuke's face when Tenten worked with him on the targets (which Sakura had only seen because she was passing through there on her way to the hospital) had been what reminded her that she should practice, but that was neither here nor there. She was a shinobi, and shinobi trained. Training had been the plan.

Logically, it made sense that one hundred percent accuracy would mean a lot of time spent at the targets, certainly more than once a day. The fact that the voice surprised her just made Sakura unduly irritated with herself.

"Oh—hi, Sakura. I didn't know anyone was here."

Sakura turned, kunai raised, and her gaze fell on Tenten, and she found herself unable to reply, standing paralyzed behind a forced smile.

There was nothing special about her. Nothing to make her stand out. Nothing to earn that respect in his face, that expression Tenten hadn't even seen, her eyes fastened instead to her kunai.

_Why, then? Why you?_

"Um," Tenten exhaled after a second, seeming to pick up on the tension in the air. "Well, don't let me interrupt. I'll see you around—"

"Wait." It took Sakura a second to realize that the word had come from her own mouth, and Tenten faced her with an expectant gaze. Sakura glanced at the ground, then back up, the fire still smoldering in the pit of her stomach. The practical, responsible side of her sounded a warning, but the words were already leaving her mouth. "You can stay."

"You sure?"

"Of course," Sakura said. This was reasonable. "It's no bother."

Tenten smiled. "Thanks. I'll try to stay on this half, but let me know if I'm bugging you, okay?"

Sakura nodded, eyes back on her target. It took a second for her to backpedal. _'Try to stay on'...what?_

She glanced across the training yard just as Tenten unfurled a worn and well-used practice scroll, running her fingers over the symbols and summoning an enormous pile of throwing weapons - kunai, shuriken, senbon needles, even some small axes and scythes - each with different colored bands wrapped around them. Some were green, some pink, some yellow, some blue.

Tenten straightened, and Sakura quickly focused back on her own practice, trying not to stare. She had her own training to tend to.

_Throw, hit. Jump, throw, hit. Throw, block, duck, throw, turn, throw, hit, hit, hit. Don't look at Tenten. Throw, hit. Throw, hit. This is her specialty, not yours, don't look, don't compare._

_Don't look for what he sees._

But it was distracting. When the mountain of weapons began to clink and shift and rise, and when an amber glow traced a hundred lines to Tenten's fingers as she carefully manipulated their strings, Sakura couldn't help but pause, and look.

Tenten's eyes were closed, her breathing deliberate and even, the way it needed to be for the level of chakra control she was using. Behind her, the weapons rose and mixed and held perfectly still, her own army at her back. It looked..._she_ looked powerful, even though she had done so little.

_How?_

Taking one more deep breath, Tenten opened her eyes. Swept them over the targets. Then she slowly drew back her arms, like a bird about to fly, and whipped them forward.

It was so fast, a flash and a whistle and the rattling _thunk_ of targets struck, that Sakura had to blink rapidly for a moment before understanding. She looked down the first row of targets, the second, the third, and every last one of them had sprouted a weapon at the dead center. Wrapped around every last weapon was a bright green band.

A moment, and chakra flared at each bull's-eye as Tenten's chakra pulled them free and floated them back into the muddle. One breath, two. Then she did it again, this time with a cascade of pink-wrapped blades rattling the target posts. Behind her, the rest of her army remained suspended obediently in place.

Sakura was staring, and she wasn't supposed to be doing that. Turning away from the display, she looked at her own kunai. Then at her single target, with its smattering of blades all across its face.

_Sasuke-kun likes girls with long hair,_ she'd been told once. Later, she had amended that to, _Sasuke-kun likes the girl I'm going to be when I get it right._ Then, after they were teamed together, she'd amended it again to a frustrated, _Sasuke-kun doesn't like anything,_ and then, after seeing some things, to a wary, _Sasuke-kun likes power._ Was this it? Was this what he saw?

_Throw, hit. Throw, hit. Jump, throw, hit. Stop thinking._

Another rattle of targets from Tenten's half, and Sakura caught yellow from the corner of her eye, and she was fine. Tenten repeated it once more with the blue, and Sakura was fine.

She was fine.

Voices from her academy days whispered at the back of her mind. _You are kunoichi, but you are girls first. Others will try to use your emotions against you to weaken you, because they know that we use our emotions against ourselves every day. Never forget that your feelings are yours; the only one allowed to control them is you._

Ino and her friends had sighed dramatically after class about how unromantic all that nonsense was. Not wanting to be left out, Sakura had sighed, too.

Taking a breath, restarting her own kata, Sakura wondered if she knew her own real feelings about anything at all.

Tenten was taking to the air now, flying with her blades in that way she did, doing something more complicated with them now. The metal flashed in the sun as they shot into the targets one by one, _thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk_, green-pink-yellow-blue-green-pink-yellow-blue.

It was an enormous display of chakra control, for her to keep the pattern going like that. _Chakra control_, she'd heard Tenten say to Sasuke after her fight in the Chuunin Exam finals, and Sasuke had smiled. There had been pride in it. He'd been _proud_ of her.

Last week, Sakura had learned a strike that would break eight bones at once, along with a jutsu that could heal all eight of them in thirty seconds. Sasuke had never seen it, because whenever she asked to train with him, he said no.

_I am angry at you_, she silently allowed, watching from the ground while Tenten soared. _That is one thing that I feel._

What Tenten was doing was complex, delicate. One blade out of line, and…

Consciously, Sakura told herself, _Leave her alone. Don't be petty. Just train._

But she was angry, and her arms were much stronger now, and those together meant that when she threw, she threw hard. Too hard. Hard enough that the blade ricocheted off the edge of the target post, and hard enough that it didn't just fall to the ground, but went wheeling off to the side, right into one of Tenten's strings.

It took all of three seconds.

_One_, the string flashed amber with reinforcing chakra as Sakura's kunai bounced off of it and hit the ground.

_Two_, the string bent, and the kunai on the end of it ran into the hand axe next to it at high speed, throwing it off course with a _clang_.

_Three_, Sakura stumbled backward with a yelp, confused for a moment until a gleam caught her eye, and she looked down and blinked uncomprehendingly at the hand axe embedded in her ankle.

Oh. She should...sit down.

As she lowered herself to the ground, a deep, burning throb began to work its way up her leg, and she grimaced and made herself breathe through it, _oh_ this hurt, this really hurt-

"Sakura!" Tenten was abruptly next to her, unharmed but stricken. "Oh no, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, are you okay? Let me see-"

"I'm fine, I can do it."

"-doesn't look that deep, but there was chakra running through it, it might have cauterized-"

"I can _do_ it!" Sakura snapped, and Tenten fell silent. Sakura exhaled through her nose, angry at Tenten and angry at Sasuke and angry at herself. She focused on the careful work of pulling out the blade - Tenten was right, the chakra had burned her, stopping the gash from bleeding - and placing a shaky hand over the wound to attempt a healing jutsu.

She could heal regular cuts and mend bones, but chakra-inflicted injuries were more complicated to heal, and she hadn't learned how to do it yet. Her thin hope of somehow overcoming that fizzled out when the first brush of chakra against the wound burned sharply, making her hiss and jerk her hand back.

A bottle of ointment appeared by her foot. "Here."

Sakura looked up, insides boiling, but Tenten was busy digging through her hip pouch while she babbled, her brow still furrowed guiltily. "It's really good for chakra burns, I promise, I got Sasuke a bunch of times when I was figuring out this technique - well, not this deep, I'm _really_ sorry - and I had the standard ointment but you know how it stings and smells sort of weird, and," she fished out a patch of gauze and set it aside, continuing to sift through, "Sasuke mentioned that his grandmother used to crush tea leaves and mix them in? And it sounds really strange, but it actually makes it sting a lot less, and it masks the smell - you just smell kind of like tea. So I tried it. Do you want me to do it?"

Sasuke had helped Tenten learn a new technique.

Sasuke had talked to Tenten about his family - his _family_.

Sasuke had let her make his grandmother's recipe. Maybe he'd shown her how. Maybe they had sifted through tea leaves until he found the right ones, and maybe he'd curled his hand around hers to show her the proper way to mix them in, and maybe he'd smiled. He had so few smiles, but for weeks now, all of them were for Tenten. Every last one.

"Stop talking about him," Sakura murmured, probably. She wasn't entirely sure whether she said it. Maybe she was in shock.

Tenten looked up, distracted by scooping some of the ointment onto her fingers. "What?" She reached out with it, a grassy smell coming from it that really was nicer than the standard variety they all had, because it was perfect like Tenten had somehow become perfect, horribly, infuriatingly _perfect_. "Oh, sorry, you probably want to do this yourself, you're the expert. Sasuke doesn't like anyone else patching him up, either. He gives you this _look_, you know? Like he-"

The jar shot into one of the target frames so hard that it cracked, and Sakura stopped thinking, because something had snapped. "I said _stop_ it, stop!"

Tenten drew back, wide-eyed, holding up her hands, and Sakura hated her. She _hated_ her. "Stop _helping_, stop _talking!_ I don't want to hear about him! Not from _you!_"

Sakura's ankle throbbed and her chest seized and her eyes stung, and something slowly dawned in Tenten's face. "Sakura-"

"No," Sakura snapped. "Maybe he doesn't think so, but I can take care of myself. I don't need you. No one _needs_ you, we were doing _fine_, and just because he thinks he needs you now, just because you got to be the one to save him..."

Her voice broke, and the world got blurry, and she stopped there to breathe deeply and too shakily, because she did not want to cry.

Tenten knelt there for a long moment, and then silently rose. She crossed to pick up her cracked jar, took a few more steps to get Sakura's pack, and came back to set the pack next to Sakura's hip. Then she sat back down, wordless, and waited.

Sakura took another deep breath and aggressively ignored Tenten while she smeared her own stinging, smelly ointment carefully over the gash, her face burning. The angle was awkward for wrapping her ankle while keeping gauze pressed to it, and the gauze slipped twice to the ground from her shaky hands, making her need to stop and breathe again to keep from throwing the stupid thing halfway across the field. _Don't do it, don't do it. Don't you dare cry._

Quietly, Tenten said, "Can I please help?"

It was logic, the simple fact that her injury would be better cared for with two sets of hands, that kept Sakura from snapping at her. Feeling defeated, Sakura clenched her jaw and held out her foot.

Tenten's hands were gentle.

"We never really talked about that time, did we," she murmured, digging through her pack for a fresh patch. Sakura didn't answer, and Tenten chewed on her lip until she found what she was looking for. "We...we don't have to, if you don't want to, but there's something you should know about it. Something probably a lot of people should know about it. And it's that I got lucky."

Tenten carefully lifted Sakura's ankle onto her lap and met her eyes, and Sakura's fingers dug into the dirt. "That's it. He took a shortcut I'd told him about before, and that's the only reason I knew how to find him. And I just happened to catch him at the end, when he was the most tired, and the most upset, and the most weak." She began to wrap the ankle slowly but tightly. "Naruto was the one who got to him, Sakura. Not me. Nothing I said worked. All I did was make him angry and get myself stabbed. I was done after that. There was nothing else I _could_ do."

Sakura boldly looked back into Tenten's eyes, her vision blurring. Her voice broke again when she whispered, "Then why did he come back for you?"

Tenten lowered her gaze, setting Sakura's wrapped ankle carefully back down. "I don't think it was for me." She pulled her knees to her chest, playing absently with a patch of grass near her hand. "I don't know what changed for him. But he did it himself. He decided. He's the one who told me we were coming back." The blades of grass came up from their roots, and Tenten set them back down as if in apology. "Something made him remember who he really was, and he saved himself. I was just there because I got stuck in over my head."

Her modesty made the frustration too much to bear, and Sakura drove her fist into the ground, the tears still stinging her eyes. "But why does he see you?"

Tenten looked up, her face opening with confusion. "What?"

"He _sees_ you," Sakura said, giving herself a headache from holding the tears back. "Since the first day he ever talked to you, he's looked at you and _seen_ you. And you didn't even care whether he did or not." They spilled, and she wanted to curse them. "I've been doing everything for him, for years! I've been trying to make him look at me—not even see, just _look_—for so long that it's changed everything. I lost my best friend for him. I changed the way I looked for him. I changed the way I talked for him. I said such horrible things to Naruto and Lee-san and any other boys who told me they liked me, all so Sasuke-kun would look at me. It took years before he did, and even then he didn't see me. He's _never_ seen me."

Tenten looked back helplessly, her hands gone still.

Sakura furiously wiped at her face with her arm, smearing dirt across her cheeks. "No matter what I do, he still thinks I'm some useless little girl to be bailed out of trouble, and that's not who I am! But then, for no reason at all, he starts talking to you, and just like that, he's always looking at you. Straight in your eyes. And if I have to watch him look _down_ at me one more time…I can't."

"Sakura, he's never said anything like—"

"Like what?" she shot back. "What hasn't he said in these deep chats you're always having with him? That he's in love with you? That no matter how much he changes or I change, he's _never_ going to acknowledge me, not even once?"

Tenten's mouth fell open a bit, and she slowly replied, "He's not in love with me, Sakura."

"I don't care if he is or not!" Sakura said in almost a shriek, the anger pressing in on her from all sides and making her want to crumple. Instead, she stood against it, clumsily pulling herself up with her arms and shooting a fierce glare at Tenten when she stood as if to help her. "I know he doesn't love me, and he won't. That's fine! I don't need him to love me anymore. But even if he doesn't give me anything else, ever, I want his respect. The respect he gave you when he didn't even _know_ you. What did you do to deserve that?"

Tenten's brow lowered just a bit. "Deserve his…that's not really fair—"

"Nothing!" Sakura answered for her, her ears ringing and her eyes stinging. "You don't deserve for him to treat you like his equal, like you're something special compared to the rest of us, because you're not! _I_ deserve that! _I'm_ the one who's been there for him, and taken care of him, and believed in him even when no one else did, when you didn't even know his name! I was being everything for him back when you were still nothing, and I wish you would go back to being that! To me, to him, to everyone!" Something tugged in her as the words tumbled, but if she didn't scream it out the ringing in her ears would be too much. "Just go back to being the one _no one _cares about and _stay out of our lives!_"

She was met with silence. Tenten's eyes, which had sparked with hurt that quickly morphed into something conflicted and difficult to read, were not on her, but rather focused on something invisible just in front of her. Then they lifted a little, landing on something over Sakura's shoulder.

"I think," she said slowly, in a voice that was barely a voice, "that the two of you need to talk."

Realization hit Sakura, and she closed her eyes a moment. _Please don't be here. Please don't be here. Not while I'm crying. Just go away_.

She turned, and nearly crumpled again when her plea went unanswered. Sasuke stood with his arms crossed over his chest, looking silently between her and Tenten, while Naruto fastened her with a surprised stare from over his shoulder.

Sakura began to turn back toward Tenten, as though focusing on her would make them disappear, but Tenten passed her mid-turn without meeting her eyes again.

Naruto's eyes twitched into a confused squint. "That was kind of mean, Sakura-chan."

"You should take her to the hospital," Tenten said, almost interrupting him, from where she had paused at the edge of the clearing. "She hurt her ankle. Just tell them to contact me for whatever they need. It's my fault."

She vanished into the brush without another word. Sakura didn't watch her go, but instead watched Sasuke's eyes follow her while Naruto doubled around to call after her, "Hey, wait a second!" When he got no reply, he swung a conflicted stare between her and Sasuke.

Sasuke just looked at her. It was nothing like she'd hoped it would be.

If nothing else at all, her voice didn't shake when, for the first time in her life, she told Uchiha Sasuke, "I don't want to talk to you."

He didn't say anything, just _watched_, and she turned away from him. He was finally looking at her; that didn't mean she had to look back.

Pain shot through her ankle when she put weight on it, and she gritted her teeth. Naruto was next to her in a second with an alarmed, "Sakura-chan, hey," and part of her wanted to shove him away. She didn't. Naruto was okay. He was safe.

"I'll need help getting to the hospital," she said, looking only at Naruto.

Brow furrowing, Naruto looked warily between her and Sasuke again, settling on his rival and demanding, "Are you gonna say anything or not?"

Sasuke's face moved for the first time since he'd arrived, sinking into his special Naruto-frown, long-suffering and unimpressed. "She said she doesn't want to talk to me."

"So? If you talk to _her_, she won't have to!"

"Naruto," Sakura pressed, feeling suddenly and overwhelmingly tired. "Please."

He looked back at her, and immediately his frustration faded into determination. He nodded. "Right. Here." He knelt down to let her wrap her arms around his neck, then stood, carefully hoisting her onto his back. Pointing emphatically at Sasuke, he commanded, "Don't get weird and disappear!" Sasuke rolled his eyes, and then they were off.

.

Naruto stopped rushing after his first few leaps jarred Sakura's ankle, and she strained that it wasn't an emergency and _please_ slow down. He slowed to a walk on the beaten path through the forest with a _crap, sorry, sorry_, and that was better.

Sakura didn't talk for a little while after that, just letting her teammate carry her and trying not to squeeze him too tightly, willing time to speed up. She hated today. She hated a lot of things lately, and her mom insisted that she was just _getting to that age_, but she wasn't angry for no reason. She had reasons, and they were real. She thought they were. But maybe they weren't real enough. Maybe she just wasn't a nice girl. Maybe she never had been.

Without thinking about it much, she murmured to Naruto, "Do you still like me?"

Naruto glanced back at her, surprised and then grinning. "Yeah! Wanna go on a date?"

"Naruto." She thumped him on the shoulder, pressing her lips together, because she didn't want to laugh right now, either. She took a breath. "Why...why do you like me?"

"Lots of reasons!" he said, turning happily back to the path. "You're really smart, and pretty, and cool, and you've got kinda bad taste since you like stupid Sasuke, but I forgive you. I've always liked you, you know?"

Sakura let out a huff, her face heating from the praise, even though it was just Naruto being Naruto. She pressed her face into his jacket. "You shouldn't," she said. "You should like someone else."

"Nah. How come?"

"I lie," Sakura mumbled into his shoulder.

He slowed down, shifting her up on his back, careful not to jar her ankle. "What do you mean?"

"I lie," she said again, not lifting her face even though she could feel him craning his neck to catch her eye. "There are things I want to say, things I think and believe, but I don't say them. I say something else. I want the people I care about to look at me, but I don't want them to see me. Just this...person I made up. Not me."

She swore she could hear him frowning, and of course he wouldn't understand. Instead of saying so, he said, "I see you."

"No," she said, "you don't. Lee-san doesn't. Sasuke-kun definitely doesn't." She closed her eyes. "None of you."

"Why not?" Naruto asked. "If there's stuff you want to say, why don't you say it?"

"Because," she whispered, though she didn't know who she thought would hear, "sometimes those things are awful."

Naruto kept quiet, and she swallowed and kept going. "What I said to Tenten was awful. But it was true. I want that. I think I'd be happier if Sasuke-kun wasn't her friend. Even though I know it would make things worse for her, deep down, I don't care. Deep down, I think I hate her a little. I think I wanted to hurt her. And she didn't even do anything wrong."

Naruto was being too quiet. Maybe she was finally putting his dumb little crush on her to rest. He liked Tenten, she knew. He considered her a friend, an ally in Keeping Sasuke From Being Stupid, and they could make each other laugh. Maybe he was about to drop Sakura on the ground, wave his arms around and shout, the way he did at Sasuke sometimes. Maybe he was realizing that neither of his teammates were what he'd hoped they would be. She supposed she could keep talking, letting this out, until he did.

"So when I want to say something that's real, that's inside me, I don't. Because I want to be a good person. I keep hoping that if I act like a good person, someone who's patient, and happy, and nice, I'll become that person. But it never happens." She pressed her forehead into his shoulder, sagging into him, and he took her weight and shifted her up again and kept walking. "It never happens."

For a little bit, that was all. Naruto walked, and Sakura hid, and the birds sang.

The murmur of the village was just growing near when Naruto said, "I did that."

Sakura lifted her eyes enough to catch part of his profile, but not enough to read his face. "What do you mean?"

"What you said," Naruto replied. "Lying."

Sakura exhaled a laugh, tired. "You, Naruto?"

"Yeah." He abruptly changed course, taking them away from the busier part of the street, moving toward the hospital on a quieter path. "In the academy, I did lots of dumb stuff, right? Like, really dumb. Then I laughed about it, and everybody else laughed. But I didn't want to laugh. Not really." He lowered his eyes a little, seeming far away. "Inside, I wasn't laughing. Inside, I was angry. I was..." he lowered his voice, almost like he wasn't talking to her anymore, "...really, really angry."

Sakura rested her chin on his shoulder, guilt already starting to creep through. She remembered academy-Naruto. He'd once bounded up and asked her on a date in front of all of her friends. She'd said, _Eww_, and turned him down. While the girls had snickered behind her, he'd grinned, big and obnoxious, and promised he'd keep asking until she said yes. She'd wondered, later that night, if she could have done something like that. Asked Sasuke on a date, put herself out there in such a vulnerable way, and been so cheerful if he'd rejected her that completely.

"But if I'd been angry out loud, that wouldn't have been any good," Naruto went on, some of the light coming back to his voice. "Everyone was already scared of me to start with because of, you know." He poked himself in the belly, and she understood, _Kyuubi_. "So if I didn't laugh, they'd keep being scared. They'd see me, and they wouldn't like it, so they wouldn't look at me." He nodded, as if confirming that he was very wise. "But if I laughed, they'd laugh, too. They'd laugh, and they'd look at me, like I wanted. They'd be too busy looking at me to see me. And then-maybe, I wouldn't have to see me, either. And then it'd be okay." He glanced back at her, a flash of blue. "It's like that, right?"

Sakura swallowed a lump in her throat and nodded. "Like that."

"Yeah," Naruto said softly.

She whispered, "I'm sorry."

He shifted her up again. "It's okay."

She held on, tried to ease her weight on him a little, and wasn't at all prepared for him to grin big and toothy and add, "You're cute, so I can forgive you."

She smacked him in the shoulder again, not hard, and he laughed, and she wondered if it was real. She thought it might be.

"I'm not," she said, slowly sobering. She rested her chin back on his shoulder. "Not really."

"Yeah, you are," he said, nudging his shoulder up to bump her chin, and it was a weird, fond little motion, and she wasn't as annoyed as she wanted to be.

"You wouldn't like me," she insisted. "If you knew...me. I don't think you'd like me the way you think you do."

Naruto stopped, and she noticed abruptly that they were at the hospital doors. Before going in, he nudged her again, turning enough that she could see his smile, and said softly, "Bet I would."

He waited for the little smile to work its way from the warm spot behind her ribs to her mouth, then pushed open the door. While he cheerily checked her in at the desk, she held on tight around his shoulders, and when he piggybacked her to the waiting chairs and carefully set her down on one foot so she could seat herself, she kept holding on for a second, because otherwise he might not understand how glad she was that he was her teammate. That he was her friend.

"You don't have to laugh," she mumbled into the back of his jacket.

He ducked his head, the tips of his ears turning red, but his voice was sure and quietly confident when he replied, "You don't have to lie."

She squeezed a little tighter, then pulled back, letting him help her ease into one of the chairs, letting him bump arms with her when he sat down beside her.

After a moment, he added, "You should probably apologize to Tenten, though. If she didn't do anything wrong."

Sakura sighed. "I know."

"It won't be that bad. She won't be mad at you or anything. I don't think she gets mad at anyone. Except Fuzzy-Brows and S—uh. You know."

She groaned, dropping her face into her hand. "I _know_," she said miserably. "What do I say?"

"I dunno. I think she likes listening to people more than talking. Maybe tell her what you told me?"

Sasuke, quiet, antisocial Sasuke, spending all of his time with a good listener. She tried to picture the conversations between them, and couldn't, really. Though it did explain how the girl got along so well with Naruto.

"Do you like her better than me?" she asked, feeling ten kinds of pathetic and not really caring.

Naruto squinted, pretended to think about it, wrinkled his nose and shook his head. "Nah."

_Ha_, she thought, pettily, then immediately reprimanded herself. And then remembered. And…oh, why not.

"Ha," she said under her breath, just as pettily. She waited, and the world didn't end.

Naruto grinned at her, but didn't laugh, and she laughed a little for him.

It was a start.

.

She had hoped to catch Tenten alone for this, but that wasn't how her luck was going lately. If nothing else, it at least looked like they hadn't noticed her.

Tsunade-sama had shown Sakura a few tricks to conceal herself. She tried those out now, locked down the little burst of jealousy that crept up at the sight of them, and observed. She had glimpsed Tenten training with Sasuke before, but had only ever watched for a moment before hurrying away, because it made her angry, and angry didn't fit with who she'd been trying to be.

This time, she tried taking Naruto's advice. _I am angry_, she acknowledged, _and that's fine._

Strangely, once she let the anger be real, it felt less blinding, less like some enormous, ugly thing trying to burst out of her chest. It was there, and there it was, so now she could pay attention.

Tenten and Sasuke fought well together. At what looked like mid-spar, they were both going strong, no weapons to be seen. They were fast, well-matched in strength, good at anticipating each other. Sakura knew their fighting styles already, so instead she watched their faces.

Their expressions were almost the same. Focused, determined, but behind those things, a spark. At least, for Sasuke it was a spark. Tenten smiled more easily, and even laughed a couple of times. Once, she dodged a strike and actually _ruffled Sasuke's hair_ as she shot past him, making him huff and scowl at her, even as he spun to block her and launched into a more aggressive attack.

They were having fun. At least, Sakura thought this might be what Sasuke looked like when he was having fun.

And when they finished (Tenten surprising Sasuke by snapping out of her stance to tackle him outright, with more grappling and rolling around on the ground than Sakura cared to watch before they had to call it a draw), they sat for a little while to catch their breath, and Tenten launched into a cheerful interrogation about some taijutsu technique Sasuke had used, and Sasuke got smug until she clocked him in the head with an acorn and told him not to be a brat.

Sakura had never seen anyone talk to Sasuke that way, tease him that way, and weirdly enough, it seemed to relax him. He looked - if not happy, because he never looked happy, not really - he looked content.

Maybe, Sakura thought hesitantly, that was all that mattered.

"Yeah," Tenten was saying when Sakura tuned back in, "Naruto caught me earlier and said I could come to the ramen shop, too. How much do you want to bet he's going for the group discount?"

"No bet," Sasuke said, rolling his eyes. "Are you coming?"

Tenten shifted. "I don't know. He said it's your whole team that's going, right?"

Sasuke nodded once, frowning. "Why?"

Biting her lip through a sigh, Tenten began, "Sasuke, look-"

"Sakura was wrong," Sasuke interrupted, and it stung like a slap even though that was exactly what Sakura had come to tell Tenten as well. "You don't have to hide from her."

"I'm not hiding!" Tenten stood, busying herself with collecting some blades that must have come out earlier in their spar. "I just don't want to jump in on all of your team bonding time right now, you know? At least not until she and I have talked."

"There's nothing to talk about," Sasuke said, frown deepening. "She doesn't decide who I talk to, and you didn't do anything to her. She should respect you."

Tenten paused, looking at him. "She's your teammate," she said. "You should respect her, too."

If Sakura hadn't felt guilty before, she certainly did now. She shifted a little without thinking about it, and for a split-second she could have sworn Tenten heard her. But Tenten just went back to her blade-collecting, and silently Sakura breathed again.

Sasuke's only response was to clench his jaw and turn his frown moodily away, and Tenten retrieved one more kunai. Glancing at it, she crossed to Sasuke and flipped the blade handle-out. "Here."

He grudgingly lifted his gaze and took the handle, but Tenten didn't let go right away. More quietly, she said, "Thanks for sending Lee the other day after that...whole thing with Sakura, by the way. He said you told him he should check in with me." She smiled. "We ended up sparring for about four hours and then eating the _yakiniku_ place almost out of business. So, thanks."

Sasuke lowered his eyes and shrugged, pocketing the kunai when she let go of it. "It was just to make sure."

"To make sure what?"

"That you didn't believe her."

Tenten looked at him for a long moment, then sighed quietly and ruffled his hair again. He recoiled, clicking his tongue and glaring at her, and she grinned back. "You go ahead. I've got a couple of things I need to do before eating, anyway. I'll think about it, okay?"

Sasuke studied her for a second, then nodded and pushed himself to his feet. "Fine."

They bid each other farewell - just a wave with a, "See you," and a silent nod, no tight embrace like she'd seen at the Chuunin Exams - and Sasuke disappeared into the trees. Left alone, Tenten rolled her shoulders a few times and took a breath. "You can come out now."

Sakura grimaced. For a second, she considered pretending she wasn't there, but then she remembered that talking to Tenten was the whole reason she'd come here in the first place, and she surrendered. Canceling the concealment jutsu, she steeled herself and walked into the clearing.

Tenten turned to face her, leaning back against a tree and holding her elbows. After a long few seconds of not really saying anything, she said, "Were you there a long time? I didn't notice you until a minute ago."

"Not..._that_ long." Sakura winced. "Does that mean Sasuke-kun knew-"

Tenten shook her head. "I don't think so. Just, the technique you used. It's Tsunade-hi-er, the Hokage's technique, right?" When Sakura nodded, dumbstruck, Tenten smiled a little bit, looking at the ground. "When I was younger, I read everything about Tsunade-sama that I could get my hands on. She was my hero. Well, she still is." She shrugged. "A lot of the stories talked about her using that concealment technique, so I sort of taught myself. I just recognized it, that's all."

"Oh," Sakura said.

"How's your ankle? Is it getting better?"

"Yes, it's...it wasn't that bad."

"Oh, that's good."

They lapsed into silence, and Sakura mentally kicked herself. She was here for a reason. "Look, um." _I'm sorry I was rude to you,_ she continued in her mind, _and I'm sorry I'm not as nice as you are, and I'm sorry I'm selfish, but I'm trying._

What came out instead was, "Why did you say that to him? About...about respecting me?"

Tenten tilted her head. "Because he should."

"But he was defending you. He was saying those things about me because he likes you."

"So? He says a lot of things. Everyone says a lot of things." Sakura lowered her eyes, uncomfortable, and Tenten slowly went on, "I don't...I don't have that many people. More than I used to, but still not very many. Up until last year, all I really had was my team. And I care about them more than anything. They're my family." From her vantage point, Sakura could watch Tenten's foot tracing hesitant patterns in the dirt. "So if I felt like someone was...stealing one of them, or, or taking away from that connection I have with them, I think I would get pretty angry, too. I don't know what I would do. But I think...no matter what I did, that still wouldn't make it okay for someone to tell me that what I was feeling didn't matter."

Hoarsely, Sakura managed, "I shouldn't have said those things to you." A fortifying breath, and Sakura bowed her head. "I'm sorry."

When she straightened again, Tenten was watching her, her expression unreadable. Just before Sakura could start squirming, Tenten asked, "Did it help?"

"What?"

"Saying those things. Saying them out loud. Did it help you?"

Sakura started to shake her head, then thought about it. About letting the anger out, and about what it led to. About Naruto. About how she felt now, just letting the anger be.

"A little," she answered finally. "But not for the reason that...I mean…" She huffed a breath, trying to get her words together. "I think...I don't know who to be, now."

Tenten was silent, so Sakura pushed forward. "When I was teamed up with Sasuke-kun, I thought it was my chance. I knew who I wanted to be: I wanted to be the girl that got through to Sasuke-kun. Because no one had ever done that, and I thought...I didn't know very much about myself, but I knew I liked him more than anyone else, and since I was on his team now, it must be my job to be there for him. That's who I decided I should be. So I tried to be that. I tried really hard."

Her throat ached, and there the tears were, just waiting. She tried to think of Naruto. _I might cry_, she acknowledged, _and that's fine._

"So everything that was me depended on what he needed. I tried to be what he needed me to be, and that version of me, that was what I wanted him to see. I thought, maybe, he almost did. But then...then you happened. And you didn't work hard to be that person, that person who was what he needed, you didn't try at all, but you just..._were._ He didn't need me to be that, because he had...he has you." She swallowed hard, absently swiping a bit of moisture from her eyes. "So I don't know who I am anymore. And when I want to blame someone for that, it's easiest to blame you."

Faintly, Tenten said, "I'm sorry."

Sakura shook her head. "It's not your fault. I know it isn't. I just need to...figure it out, I guess."

They fell silent for a bit, and Sakura got her breath back, and she was starting to consider leaving with the shreds of her dignity when Tenten slowly said, "Well...I know one part of who you are now." Sakura looked up, and the corner of Tenten's mouth quirked up. "You're an apprentice to _the_ Tsunade-hime, leader of our entire village. That's something."

Sakura's mouth curved up a little, too. "That's true."

"True? It's _huge_," Tenten insisted. "She's been my hero for my entire life! When I heard that she'd taken on an apprentice, and it was _you_, and I'd never even been asked?" Her grin turned sheepish. "I was...really jealous. I'm _still_ jealous. Look at who you get to train with!"

Sakura huffed a little, the curve threatening to turn into a real smile. "Trade you?"

Tenten's face opened in surprise, then sank into something calculating. "I'm listening."

They managed to stare each other down for about three seconds before Sakura broke, laughing in spite of herself, and Tenten followed soon after, collapsing into giggles.

"Oh, no," Tenten strained out, shining with mirth. "Sasuke would never forgive me for trading him."

"He'd never forgive _me_ for being your replacement," Sakura gasped, and Tenten clapped a hand to her face, laughing harder, which made Sakura laugh harder in turn.

It felt good. It was a different kind of outburst, a different kind of confession, and it hurt a little. But more than that, it felt...really, really good.

Finally getting her breath, Tenten sagged back against the tree trunk and panted, "He'd get over it. I bet you could give him a run for his money now, with the training you're getting."

Sakura inclined her head, smiling at the ground. "Not yet," she said. "But one day."

When she looked up again, Tenten was smiling back at her. "Good."

A breeze gusted through the trees, sending a flock of birds flying, and Tenten seemed to take it as a point, pushing away from her tree. "Look," she said, growing serious again, "if there's anything specific that you just...don't want me to do with Sasuke around you, just tell me, okay? I don't want to make you uncomfortable, and I don't want to make things weird on your team, or anything."

Sakura shook her head, feeling remarkably light. "Things are always weird on my team." Tenten's face said she understood perfectly. Sakura thought of how easy the two of them were with each other, of Sasuke's rare smiles. His contentment. "Just...keep being good to him," she finally decided, nodding a little as she got there. "That's all."

Tenten's face softened. "You're a good friend to him, Sakura."

Shaking her head again, Sakura replied, "Not yet. But...one day for that, too."

Tenten opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, branches rustled, and Naruto's voice echoed through the trees, "Hey! Tenten? Anybody?"

Sakura rolled her eyes, and Tenten grinned and called back, "Here, Naruto."

A little more rustling, and Naruto poked his head into the clearing. "Oh, hey! Were you..." Then, noticing Sakura, he froze mid-step, looking nervously between them. "Uh."

It was a good day to have mercy, so Sakura saved him. "Time for ramen, right?"

"Uh, right."

"Good." Sakura lifted her chin, smiling. "Tenten's coming, too. Right?"

Tenten blinked, then beamed. "Sure. Did you want me to check with my team? You need six people for a group discount, right?"

Naruto looked between them one more time, then brightened like the sun. "Hey, yeah! I already saw Fuzzy-Brows earlier when he was going to spar with White-Eyes, so he's coming."

"So I can grab them both on the way out of here," Tenten agreed. "I'm ready if you guys are."

Naruto whooped and grabbed Sakura by the arm to speed-march her out of the training grounds while she yelped with surprise, Tenten chuckling as she caught up and fell into step on her other side. Once Sakura had pulled free, she pressed her lips together, then subtly, deliberately bumped shoulders with Naruto.

_Thank you_.

He grinned widely and bumped her back, and when they got Tenten's teammates from the sparring field, even his squabbling with Lee was cheerful.

And when the five of them and Sasuke arrived at Ichiraku at the same time, the gobsmacked stare that blinked across Sasuke's face as he looked between her and Tenten was enough to make Sakura smile. As they started the complicated dance of choosing seats, Tenten leaned in by Sakura and whispered, "Don't tell him I almost traded him for Tsunade-sama."

Sakura grinned. "Maybe I will."

"Ha, ha."

She didn't sit by Sasuke, instead settling in between Naruto and Lee, resigning herself to an hour of clumsy flirting in exchange for a lot of laughing. On the other side, Tenten floated around between Sasuke and her teammates, chatting with Hyuuga for a while before getting up to tease Sasuke, then leaning over to joke with Lee, and for a second, she thought she caught the corner of Sasuke's mouth twitching up. Because he was happy, or something close to it.

And Sakura was okay. Or something close to it.

It was a start.

.

_Fin_

_._


End file.
